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Upgraded mobo along with cpu and RAM last year, not because I had performance issues but because stuff broke. Still using a four year old GPU which has worked fine for just about everything and the only game where performance has been an issue is The Witcher 2 (which was still playable, just a bit ugly).

I'll probably grab a new GPU in the near future but when, what and whether I upgrade anything else will depend on whether the new consoles and new PC hardware increase requirements across the board. The other major factor is that there are less and less graphics-intensive games I'm interested in, so the incentive to spend large sums on PC hardware is dwindling with time.

Consoles couldn't come out soon enough. I really wanna upgrade but i will NOT get shafted by buying shit that gets obsolete in months.

nothing you buy (new of course) will be obsolete in a year time. We won't be getting 8xxx series from amd or 7xx from Nvidia this year
cpu are stagnant and neither intel nor amd have anything big planned this year just small improvements.

if you want to upgrade now is really the time as prices on current hardware won't really go down before January and replacement stuff will not make current hardware obsolete.
New consoles will start pushing pc gear around late 2014 in my opinion.

you CAN wait for new intel cpus to apparently come this june but they won't cause drop in price of ivy bridge cpus nor will provide greater performance. a tiny update nothing more.

nothing you buy (new of course) will be obsolete in a year time. We won't be getting 8xxx series from amd or 7xx from Nvidia this year
cpu are stagnant and neither intel nor amd have anything big planned this year just small improvements.

It's quite possible AMD will release their (retail) 8000 series around Christmas this year. CPUs are not stagnant; Intel are releasing a new architecture less than two months from now, AMD significantly improved their FX processors late last year.

I stopped giving a shit about hardware names and numbers a good decade ago so I couldn't tell you what I have right now. It's a black rectangular box that runs Far Cry 3 fine at Low-Medium settings. Yeah, it's getting a bit long in the tooth, but it's still good enough for me.

I figure I'll buy one of the next gen consoles pretty soon after release, and then wait a year or two before getting my next high-end gaming PC.

I have a midrange laptop from 2 years ago that can still play every console port I throw at him, and can play Battlefield 3 in Low at about 20fps. The screen is not even FullHD, 1366x768.
I don't see reasons to upgrade, mainly because I don't have money for a real desktop :)

lol...
of course not. You will see a curious phenomen in one year however; your new spiffy system will not be able to play new games.

I have a Phenom II 965 running at a mild 3.8Ghz overclock. It's paired with 8GB of DDR2 800 RAM, a Radeon 7870 Myst, onboard sound, an HDD and a SSD booting to Windows 8. My monitor is 24" running at a 1920x1200 resolution. I will absolutely guarantee there will not be a single PC game launched in 1 years time that it will be incapable of running at that native resolution at a minimum of 50fps.

I have a Phenom II 965 running at a mild 3.8Ghz overclock. It's paired with 8GB of DDR2 800 RAM, a Radeon 7870 Myst, onboard sound, an HDD and a SSD booting to Windows 8. My monitor is 24" running at a 1920x1200 resolution. I will absolutely guarantee there will not be a single PC game launched in 1 years time that it will be incapable of running at that native resolution at a minimum of 50fps.

That gives me some hope. I've not been able to push this one past 3.2 stable (though not gone into the details of voltages etc yet), and I've got a 4870 which is waiting till I send it to the spares bin once I eventually get enough together to upgrade. Also only have 4GB ram currently, but I tend not to need more. A SSD would be nice. :)

That gives me some hope. I've not been able to push this one past 3.2 stable (though not gone into the details of voltages etc yet), and I've got a 4870 which is waiting till I send it to the spares bin once I eventually get enough together to upgrade. Also only have 4GB ram currently, but I tend not to need more. A SSD would be nice. :)

Until 3 weeks ago I was running a 4890 that had served me very well. Phenoms can be tricky, just go slow with small clock bumps. SSDs are the single biggest upgrade anyone can make to their overall computing experience IMO.

It's quite possible AMD will release their (retail) 8000 series around Christmas this year. CPUs are not stagnant; Intel are releasing a new architecture less than two months from now, AMD significantly improved their FX processors late last year.

The new architecture from Intel is just small improvement compared to Ivy nothing groundbreaking. Even if you are sitting on Sandy you can skip it with ease.
and amd improved FX but there is nothing coming right now which can make them pointless (from amd that is)

Originally Posted by mashakos

lol...
of course not. You will see a curious phenomen in one year however; your new spiffy system will not be able to play new games. It's like all the new games are buggy or unoptimised or something!

no you won't.
literally buggy games like GTAIV is one thing but we won't see repeat of 2006 as neither xbox nor ps will be stronger than average gaming PC. Nothing to challenge a brand new computer purchased in April/May 2013.

Upgrading/buying new pc is always a weird thing as stuff becomes cheaper, weaker than what is on the market. AMD might release 8xxx series in December. unlikely but they might do it. It will be expensive at first so you will wait for price drop but then 9xxx or 7xx will be on horizon so you wait for it.

consoles are not going to make any pc obsolete... a new one tough. four year old pc which could play skyrim, akrham city on high might be forced to play new games on low to medium.
i5 and 6xx computer bought now?
safe for two years.

The new architecture from Intel is just small improvement compared to Ivy nothing groundbreaking. Even if you are sitting on Sandy you can skip it with ease.
and amd improved FX but there is nothing coming right now which can make them pointless (from amd that is)

It's a 10-15% performance improvement, which is pretty typical of how it's been in the past. Perhaps slightly on the low side, but that's mostly because they're also moving part of the voltage regulation onto the CPU as well as again improving the GPU.

Sure, if you're on Sandy Bridge there's no reason to upgrade. But that's exactly like in the past.

How is this a 'break', are you forced to upgrade if new shit releases?

All this means is anyone who does have to or want to upgrade is stuck paying high premiums for old hardware and that you get less performance for your euro than you would have otherwise, there is nothing positive about this situation.